Wednesday, 16 January 2013

The schools pages for The Pterosaur Database were assembled in a hurry from scraps and bits of other website material. I have now rewritten the pages to give some basic and useful information based on previous student enquiries.

The pages are basic, but they are intended to be presented in a simple to understand format. For more detailed information, The Pterosaur Database main pages are available, but there is an assumed knowledge for the main pages and some students may need to use the simple format for basic knowledge first.

The additional update is one I have been meaning to do for some time. More images have been added to the Free Download page to allow students to enhance their coursework with useful and approved graphics. These pages may be developed over the next few months to include simple PowerPoint presentations and downloadable text worksheets.

Friday, 4 January 2013

A number of wing bone fractures are known to have occurred in pterosaur specimens around the wrist area (Wing metacarpal and first phalange joint). I have puzzled over why this should be the case and have not found a satisfactory explanation until now.

This Pterodactylus from the Solenhofen Limestone in Bavaria shows a fracture of the first wing phalange near to the joint with the wing metacarpal. This appears to be a stress fracture at a weak point in the bone. It is not typical of a failure that would occur during flight or in predatory conflict.

The same type of fracture can be seen in the X-ray of this Tapejarid fossil, where the wing metacarpal has been broken near to the joint. Such fractures would have collapsed one wing, making it impossible to fly. If this type of fracture occurred causing the pterosaur to fall into water, the injury would probably have been fatal. In both of these cases, the fracture resulted in the death of these animals.

Similar fractures can be seen on isolated bone ends of medium sized pterosaurs. These fracture patterns are not uncommon across the order as a whole, but are seldom seen in smaller individuals.

Mike Habib has been postulating the use of quadrupedal launching for large pterosaurs for some time now and his ideas are received with some caution. However, the biology and anatomical structure of the wing bones in such a launch would impose stress on the bone structures which, in some cases, would explain their occasional fractures. I consider it unlikely that pterosaurs would use this launch method across all genera as a prime method of launch, but the functionality and energy conservation of such a launch method seems to me to suggest that many species of pterosaur could take advantage of this type of take off strategy.

From my own experiments with pterosaur wing efficiency in gliding, it is clear that this method of launch is very practical, especially in species with larger wing areas and larger wing spans. It also seems that apparently older animals have relatively thinner bone cortex thickness to bone diameter ratios, making the bones more likely to be affected by take-off stress in quadrupedal launch.

I do not have conclusive data on this matter, but there is a potential thesis here for someone intent enough to take on the task.